October 31, 2011

I had a dream. Or maybe it was a new television series. Everyone died in their sleep. The whole planet. Right away you imagine that someone had to survive. A wino. Someone working the graveyard shift. Someone who couldn’t get to sleep. Even in your dreams we as homo sapiens are eternally optimistic. Somebody had to wake up. And somebody did. Me.

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October 31, 2011

God, I was cynical. And with good reason. But I think I was also happy. Easy to criticize the world from the comfort of a nice soft woman. Action. Hadn’t considered that. Then I wouldn’t have known what to do. And knowing would have had to be sure. That it is the right thing to do. That’s the problem with comfortable moral people. They wave their fingers but refuse to do anything. I think a revolutionary has to be a bit of a socio-path. He has to be able to step out of the moral confines of his upbringing. And that is dangerous. Because out there it is easy to get lost. And become the tyrant you so much wish to dethrone.

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October 31, 2011

Every weekend I would rush to read her column. They were always economic, insightful, and very funny. I can’t remember her name. Maybe she was a he. But I loved her reviews. Of restaurants. And that’s the life of a critic. They are the most easily forgotten of writers. Because they are parasites. And I mean that in the best possible way. They live only as long as their host is in the limelight. But unlike most artists, they make a decent living, marry happily (or not), send their kids off to college, and die, gasping for breath in an empty hospital room. I have been hurt by critics. One, I swear never read the book he was ravishing. I have even been hurt by critics who loved my books. They didn’t go quite go far enough in their praise. You see, the whole thing is about vanity. And the critic’s is the largest. Even larger than the artist. Because he/she decides who is worthy.

That’s it. I’m out of here. (Beginning to sound like a critic myself.)

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October 30, 2011

my first experimenting with being john lennon. also ferlinghetti. words are always fun. when i started writing. i was three. or thereabouts. my mother bought me a notebook. and i told stories. if i couldn’t spell a word. i asked. if no one answered i would draw a picture. or cut it out of a newspaper or magazine. and stick it in. introduction to collage.

October 30, 2011

This poem was written during the Watergate Investigations. My love affair with America was waning. The Kennedy and King assassinations had hurt. Now, I was repulsed. American confidence was turning into bluster. And bullying. But I was too hard on the generation of Nixon’s. (My parent’s generation). I think they were the most unselfish, hard working of people. They lived through a depression and two major wars. In Canada they brought in public medical care. In the U.S. they brought in civil rights legislation. In Europe and Japan they raisedthemselves from ashes. But they weren’t always well served by their leadership.

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October 29, 2011

I don’t know what I’m talking about. Or ‘was’. I’d been reading a lot of Hegel. And so my thought processes ran a kind of maze. As if an idea was a white rat. And I was keeping tabs on how long it took the little bastard to realize he wasn’t going anwhere. And I was trying to be vague. I think. Because there is no better way to hide the shallowness of a notion than to be abstract. Confuse the discussion by suggesting that you have just scratched the surface. This is thinking as a form of advertising. You want everyone to think you’re intelligent. But you don’t want to say anything too specific because they might realize that you’re stupid. I don’t know if I was aware of any of this. I just wanted to fit in. I think. And meet that blonde chick sitting in the corner.

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October 29, 2011

I love T. S. Eliot. He was the first poet that I read who used collage. Pasting pieces of his works together to make a new whole. As I mentioned before there was a girl I loved. My first girlfriend. At eighteen. First year university. And it was all too much. I wrote dozens of poems about her. And when we broke up I burned all those poems. I watched the flames eating away at all that passion. The flames went out. I grabbed bits and pieces of paper and stuck them on paper. And put together the poem below. Which only goes to prove I think that I was more interested in the idea of love than the girl. Otherwise I would have relit the fire. I was ashamed of myself. I wanted to be real. But I wanted to be a poet. And the two were in conflict.

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October 27, 2011

This was written about a friend of mine. His life seemed tortured. Nothing helped. Drugs, alcohol, women. I tried to imagine what his pain was like. And as I imagined I got pretty depressed myself. Depression is a serious illness. But in your youth there is about it… adventure, romance, attention. I hated the iconic view of artists as martyrs. Suffering for their art. And they were sensitive. You could tell. Because they suffered. Not me. I did art, wrote, painted, etc. because it was fun. And it got me into the company of a different type of woman. But my friend suffered. And he still does. And he doesn’t like it.

October 26, 2011

Ever heard of dark matter? Its supposed to make up 80% of the matter in the universe. Which means that all those bright dots of light that we see in the sky are 20% of what there is… there. A friend of mine, a science teacher, calls black matter… pretend matter. We know almost nothing about it. Perhaps it exists at an atomic level and so is invisible to us. We are the iceberg above water while ‘pretend matter’ is below the surface. It does however affect gravity. And apparently it has warped the Milky Way. Causing the edges to rise up like a LP that has been left of a warm stove. (Scientific American Vol. 305 #4)

What’s worse. They say that there may be a ‘dark galaxy’ moving through the Milky Way. Galaxies without suns. What does that mean? And what sort of life could/would exist there? Or would it be a desert. Void of anything. It may be that we will have to re-examine everything we know in science. Dark matter could be a real bug-a-boo.

Of course every child knows about dark matter. Its what goes bump in the night. Its what is waiting under your bed. To grab your foot if you let it dangle over the side.

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October 25, 2011

We all asked. Who the hell am I? I tried. But it was boring. I was boring. I never thought that I was very interesting. And when alcohol has loosened by tongue, I found that I was like one of those speakers in Hyde Park, London. Just shooting my mouth off. Once someone recorded one of my alcholic rants in a bar at a staff Christmas party. I heard it the next day. I was a fool. It was the last Christmas party I attended. There’s a law in physics that you cannot find both the location and the speed of an electron at the same time. Investigation changes the results. Thats they way it is in trying to find out who you are. Do good. And leave the rest to others.